


BubbleShocked

by Mad_Maudlin



Category: Sarah Jane Adventures, Torchwood
Genre: Crossover, Food, Gen, Humor, Season/Series 02, Team
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-23
Updated: 2010-01-23
Packaged: 2017-10-06 14:59:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/54918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mad_Maudlin/pseuds/Mad_Maudlin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Drink it!</p>
            </blockquote>





	BubbleShocked

**Author's Note:**

> **A/N:** So I finally started watching SJA and I was utterly charmed from the word go. But in Rusty's grand tradition of "worldwide phenomena that go utterly unnoticed," there's a Big Event, and I started wondering why it fell to Sarah Jane and the kids to handle it...

And Gwen suddenly found herself on the upper ramp, facing the hothouse, which had a pile of furniture and planters stacked against the doors. The main level of the Hub was a mess, chairs tossed about, papers scattered wildly, and Jack lay in a pool of blood near the invisible lift; overhead, the pterodactyl was shrieking in a particularly agitated way. The last thing Gwen remembered was leaning over Owen's shoulder to look at something on his screen; now she had a whanging headache and was, for some reason, clutching a bottle of pop.

"I've been shot," Jack announced, looking down at his bloodstained shirt.

Owen himself appeared to have had a coffee upended on his head, judging by the stains on his own clothes. "You've been shot and I'm soaking wet," he said, examining his own drink. "And where the hell are Tosh and Ianto?"

As if on cue, the leaves of a fern inside the hothouse parted, just enough for a familiar almond-shaped eye to peek through. "Tosh?" Gwen asked, leaning closer to the glass.

Tosh squeaked, and shoved the barrel of a gun through the fern. "Stay away from the door!"

"Whoa, whoa, easy there!" Owen said, and raised his hands over his head. "What the hell is going on?"

"We were hoping you knew," Ianto called, also from inside the hothouse.

Jack trotted up to the greenhouse level and stopped well clear of the doors. "Okay. I don't know what just happened, but I can confidently say it's over. There's no threat. You can come out now."

He used his most authoritative Captain Voice, and after a moment's hesitation the barricade started to come down. Gwen headed down to the computers to get a look at the internal CCTV, picking her way through the mess; the screens were an explosion of alerts and warnings. "Something's happening all over the city," she called up to the others. "All over the country, actually."

"Rift activity?" Jack asked.

Gwen checked, but-- "Nothing. Totally quiet all day."

"And still, we're in trouble," Owen muttered. He leaned against the wall and started to drink his pop.

When they emerged, Tosh and Ianto looked like hunted animals; Tosh kept her gun at the ready and her computer clutched close to her chest, while Ianto had lost his jacket and found a field hockey stick that he wielded with surprising menace. "It's okay," Jack said soothingly. "You want to clue us in on what happened here?"

"You don't remember?" Tosh asked, sounding half-hopeful.

"Not a thing," Owen said, and burped; Ianto brandished the hockey stick at him, or rather, at the bottle in his hand, causing him to back away. "Hey, take it easy!"

"You were like zombies," Ianto said lowly, eyes still a little too wide. "There was this orange light, and then you three started chasing us around, trying to make us drink that stuff..."

Owen blinked. "What, BubbleShock?"

"I've been shot four times," Jack said, pointing at the holes in his shirt for emphasis.

"You had me in a headlock," Tosh said, lifting her chin.

Gwen found the internal CCTV footage, and blinked at the sight: they'd all been hard at work, and then a halo of orange light flickered up round their heads. On the screen, she, Owen and Jack rose up as one and plodded to the refrigerator, with Tosh trailing behind, staring like they'd gone mad...until they all turned around with bottles of BubbleShock in their hands.

_"Drink it...drink it...drink it..."_

"No fucking way, "Owen, who had come down to watch, declared. He looked at the half-empty bottle in his hand dubiously. "Mind control in a bottle?"

"At least it's organic," Jack said.

Tosh seemed to be relaxing now that there were no more signs of an imminent force-feeding. "I thought maybe it was a some kind of bioresonance, but I needed more time to search for the signal, and it was either the hothouse or lock ourselves in the vaults."

"Why not lock us in the vaults?" Gwen asked.

"We tried," Ianto said ominously, and on the computer screen, the fight really got started.

They all watched for a few minutes, in silent shock, with the occasional _ouch_ or murmured _oh, shit._ Owen, in spite of it all, kept drinking his pop. "Sorry about that," Gwen told Ianto at one point.

"It's all right," he said. "Didn't want kids anyway."

Jack suddenly climbed down to the pool and fished out an unopened bottle of BubbleShock. "It's a long tradition, attacking your enemy's food supply," he said, "but this isn't a staple like bread or milk. It's liquid candy. It's the pinnacle of Western consumerism—paying for the privilege of drinking something that has to print on the label 'Don't worry, it's mostly harmless!'"

"Oi, don't get on your high horse about it, now," Owen said. "You drink it same as the rest of us. Sometimes you just need a little pick-me-up."

Ianto asked, "What do you think that coffee's for?"

Jack tossed the bottle to Owen, who barely caught it. "Analysis. I wanna know the secret of their secret ingredient. Tosh, keep looking for a triggering signal, we need to know what exactly caused this and how to block it. Gwen, Ianto, figure out how far this has spread and what the damage is. Until further notice, I'm locking up the fun toys and breaking out the stun guns—no telling if this is going to happen again."

"Permission to dispose of the remaining bottles with extreme prejudice?" Ianto asked.

Jack shook his head. "Don't flush anything until we've got some answers. We may need it for further testing."

"Or drinking," Owen said. Everyone looked at him. "What? I like the taste."

"Maybe we can localize the signal and just use it on him?" Tosh said.

"Give us a chance to drive once in a while," Gwen said, pretending to think about it.

As Jack stripped off his bloodied clothes, he called over his shoulder, "No compromising Owen's free will! I'm pretty sure there's something about that in the employee handbook."

Suddenly Gwen's screen was full of announcements. "Have a look at this, then," she called to the others. "There's been an explosion at BubbleShock's main bottling center. Whole factory went up."

"Looks like somebody's already got things sorted, then," Owen opined from the medical bay.

Tosh sighed. "Glad somebody could."


End file.
